Flower Arrangement Ideas for an Outside Wedding

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Flower Arrangement Ideas for an Outside Wedding

Outdoor weddings in the spring and summer take advantage of warm breezes, beautiful weather and lots of colorful flowers. If flowers are important to your wedding but you're on a tight budget, choose a location with a flower garden or borders in place. Supplement those flowers with flower arrangements for your wedding day.

Container Arrangements

Take advantage of all the blooming flowers at the local nursery, home improvement or big box store. Use lightweight containers in neutral colors filled with flowers to anchor the beginning of the aisle, the centers and the ends. The containers need to be large enough to hold three 1-gallon-size pots. Larger containers are fine as long as they will hold an uneven number of 1-gallon pots. The uneven number looks better esthetically.
Choose a tall flower such as snapdragon, cosmos or zinnia; a full bushy flower like petunia, daisy or azalea; and a trailing flower or plant such as ivy or bacopa for each container. The flowers don't have to be planted in the containers, just placed inside. Cover any visible pot edges with sphagnum moss.
Place smaller urns filled with 1-gallon flowering plants on the cake, buffet and gift tables. Use the urns as centerpieces for the reception tables as well.
Standards are trees, bushes or perennials that look like lollipops. The trunks are straight with a leafy blooming top that is pruned to a spherical shape. Rose standards are especially pretty. How high the standards are depends on how tall the plant normally grows. Place tall standards on either side of where the bride and groom will say their vows.
After the wedding, plant the flowers in the bride and groom's new home.

Baskets and Pedestals

Fill baskets with pots of blooming flowers or with cut flowers arranged in low glass containers. Place the baskets on pedestals to give them some height and make them look more substantial. Use the baskets without the pedestals as centerpieces at the reception.

Masses of Flowers in Vases

Outside flower arrangements dry out faster. They're in the direct sunlight and exposed to the wind. This combination causes the water to evaporate from the floral foam used to anchor most arrangements and from the leaves and petals of the flowers themselves. Flowers in water, rather than in floral foam, will last longer outside. Masses of roses, carnations, mini carnations, chrysanthemums and gerbera daisies placed in tall vases are as stunning as arrangements. If the stems aren't long enough to reach the bottom of the vase, place a shorter vase inside the first to lift the flowers up.

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About this Author

Katie Rosehill holds an MBA from Arizona State University. She began her writing career soon after college and has written website content and e-books. Her articles have appeared on GardenGuides.com, eHow, and GolfLinks. Favorite topics include personal finance - that MBA does come in handy sometimes - weddings and gardening.